Songs of the Phoenix
by midnightjen
Summary: After years of peace, Harry and his family and friends have moved on (as much as such a thing is even possible) but just when its time for the next generation to start at Hogwarts something wakes that might destroy the life that Harry and the Order worked so hard to achieve. Sequel to Blood of the Phoenix and Tears of the Phoenix.
1. Chapter 1

**a/n: **I would like to thank everyone for following this series through to this, its conclusion and point out that this will not make any sense if you haven't read Blood of the Phoenix and Tears of the Phoenix, not to mention a knowledge of Dinner with the Dursley's. This one takes place approximately ten years after the end of Tears of the Phoenix (not the epilogue) and will cover the time Molly (going by Alex) and Lily (who insists on going by James) attend Hogwarts. You'll get to see all of the characters you've come to love and i hope you enjoy this one as much as you've enjoyed the previous ones.

**Disclaimer: **I do not own Harry Potter or any of the characters created by JK Rowling, i do own the few OCs dotted throughout this series.

**Prologue**

When he'd received the request he'd had to read the parchment twice before he believed what was written on it. The form itself wasn't anything out of the ordinary, since he'd taken on the desk job the only time he got out of the dark underground cave he called an office was when the goblins needed his skills. He'd become something of an expert over the years in Ancient Egyptian wards and curses and the more time he'd spent working closely on the finds that other Curse Breakers bought back, the more he'd been able to refine his skills and knowledge by researching the curses and wards he encountered.

This had resulted in requests for him to offer assistance at certain sites over the years. All of the travel stopped him from getting bored with the deskwork and it gave Fleur a chance to show off her skills because he always took her and Victoire with him. It certainly brought the money in and the goblins were very good about giving him bonuses for any of the jobs on which he managed a break through.

Over the years he had become the foremost expert Gringott's had on Ancient Egypt. So why were they sending him to China? Confused, he locked away the ceramic jar he'd been working on, scooped up his wand and the memo and left in search of his boss in hopes they could clear up the confusion before he found himself in a strange country where he'd be no help to anyone at all.

Twenty minutes later he was on his way home to break some very strange news to his family. His meeting with Hagnok hadn't gone as he'd expected. There hadn't been a mistake; the paperwork said exactly what it was supposed to. Gringott's needed and expert on Ancient Egypt at one of their sites in Hunan, China. Why they needed an expert on Egypt was a bit of a mystery, all Hagnok had been able to say was that they'd found something interesting and were sending a number of different experts into the area.

Coming out of the office, he'd walked by Eloise Drummand who was looking just as confounded as he was and holding a similar request for assistance. Eloise was their resident expert on Ancient Babylon and Mesopotamia.

'They've called in Old Reg from retirement, too,' she'd told him in a whisper. 'Something big is going on and they're not talking about it.'

Bill offered his thoughts that the goblins weren't sharing because they didn't know anything. Eloise had looked a bit doubtful but she couldn't argue the point because like Bill, she was well aware that the goblins were normally a lot more forthcoming with information. Oh, they never shared everything they knew but they believed firmly in giving their Curse Breakers every bit of information they could in the hopes that if they knew all of the facts they'd better be able to get all the gold.

If they weren't sharing information on something that required so many experts it was because they honestly didn't have any more.

The little seaside cottage he called home was cosy, the perfect size for a family of three. The sea air was always fresh and it had gotten to the point that he found it hard to sleep if he couldn't hear the waves at night. Fred was always joking that he'd lost his sense of smell if he didn't think the smell of seaweed was more prevalent than the fresh sea air.

Fleur greeted him by the kitchen door with a warm kiss that had Victoire crying out her disgust from where she was helping her mother get dinner ready by setting the table.

'How was work, dad?' his daughter, though she spoke fluid French, always spoke English with a perfect accent. Something that annoyed her grandmother to no end but served as an endless source of amusement for everyone else. Fleur took it as a point of pride that her daughter could sound English and like a native of France whenever the mood struck her.

'Was a bit odd,' he admitted right from the start. 'I got another request for help.'

'Ooooh, another holiday!' Victoire exclaimed with delight. 'Where are we going this time dad? Valley of the Kings? Giza? Somewhere new and undiscovered by muggles?'

Fleur set plates down on the table and motioned them both into chairs. Just as intrigued as her daughter to know where they would be going next.

'Hunan,' Bill dropped the name, making sure his voice was filled with as much disbelief as certainty.

His little family were taken aback. 'But that's in China!' Victoire's disbelief, if possible, exceeded her father's initial reaction. Bill for his part was just impressed she even knew where Hunan was. Perhaps Hermione's idea about early wizarding education hadn't been such a strange idea after all.

'It is,' Bill agreed, allowing his daughter to see his own confusion over the idea. 'There has been a discovery and they're calling in all sorts or experts. They're bringing Old Reg back from retirement and he deals with the Mesoamerican curses.'

This news was greeted with delight by his daughter who felt any excuse to travel somewhere new was worth the inconvenience of her dad being taken completely out of his field and suspicion by Fleur who had never quite gotten over her unease surrounding anything out of the ordinary since the last war.

'It's not anything to worry about,' he assured her later when Victoire had gone off to bed and the two of them were sitting by the fire listening to the WWN. 'Its probably just something relatively new that some young wizard thought he'd try to protect by getting creative.'

Fleur still didn't look reassured but she let the issue go, no point worrying over something so silly. The war was a long time behind them and Voldemort was gone. Strange curses and artefacts were now just part of the job, they weren't something dangerous the Dark Lord was trying to use against them.

And so, a week later, this particular Weasley family could be found standing around the dusty old travel office in some distant part of the Gringott's building, yawning widely and surrounding by their baggage waiting for Eloise to show so they could take a portkey to the site in Hunan. Old Reg was leaning on a knobbly cane; head nodding forward as he fell into sleep. The moment his balance started to go, the old curse breaker would jerk awake and the whole thing would start again.

Bill had no idea why the portkeys always had to leave at such horribly early or late hours but he supposed he shouldn't really complain. It was all an adventure for Victoire and he needed the occasional stretch away from the desk. Eloise was no different. An injury from a bad curse kept her from working on site like she once had and she enjoyed the occasional outing, she didn't turn it into a family affair though. Her kids had all grown up and moved away with families of their own.

Bill was dreading the day when Victoire left for Hogwarts; he wasn't prepared to think about a time when she would start creating a family of her own.

Eloise arrived then, with just thirty seconds to spare, and they all hustled together quickly into the centre of the room, hands stretching out to tightly grip the plastic ring from a child's ring toss game. Bill gripped Victoire tightly with his other hand; that same old worry that she'd somehow slip and lose her grip taking hold of him despite what logic told him. Being the father of an ordinary witch was terrifying enough; he had no idea how Harry managed not to have a heart attack every time one of his girls did something crazy.

The sudden, sharp tug behind his navel surged through Bill and the world around him blurred. International travel always took a bit longer and the sensation of being pulled through a long and exceptionally narrow tunnel was not one he'd ever come to enjoy. Finally though, he felt his feet thump onto solid ground and he automatically braced himself so he didn't fall. It was only his grip on his daughter that prevented her from falling to the ground.

Bill looked around, taking a good look at their surroundings while Fleur helped Old Reg to his feet and Eloise brushed herself down. They were standing in the middle of a dusty road; the only light afforded them came from the stars shining above and the dim light of an oil lamp being held aloft by a short, elderly wizard stooped over a cane. His long white beard could have rivalled the late Albus Dumbledore's and his robes were travel worn and dusty. His gaze looked over them with a sharp intelligence although they carried a warmth that softened the intensity.

'Come,' he said, turning to lead them down a narrow path that he had been blocking from Bill's view.

Bill exchanged looks with the others but followed the little old man with a shrug. That's not to say he didn't pull out his wand, lighting the tip to cast a little more light on the path. He led the way, Victoire gripping the back of his jumper with Eloise helping Old Reg and Fleur bringing up the rear. Old habits died hard and he knew Fleur would be keeping a steady pace with them, wand out and eyes peeled for any sign of trouble. It was little things like this that showed the war would never truly leave them. He knew for a fact that Ron still slept with his wand under his pillow and Stephanie had a tendency to curse anyone who startled her.

Bill just hoped their children would never have to know that feeling of terror.

They'd been walking for twenty minutes when the sound of voices travelled toward them down the path. There were at least fifteen different voices as far as Bill could tell and they sounded calm and friendly, the jovial tones of people getting an early start on the day. Bill was ready for bed. It was going to be a long day, he could tell. Still, when they emerged from the trees the sight of a rather spacious camp greeted them. Tents ringed a clearing, a few smaller ones obviously set up for sleeping, and the larger ones for work – not that size on the outside was any indication of the tent insides proportions.

A few people sitting around the fire called out greetings to their guide before turning back to their breakfast. As they were led through the camp Bill got a good look at those sitting around the fire. They were all locals, young as well which suggested this had started out as some sort of research for the local Ministry and then spiralled when their discoveries got a lot more interesting.

Or dangerous. There was a good chance Gringott's had been called in when things got dangerous because they had a reputation for being able to handle things most wizarding establishments couldn't. It was the bonus of working for ruthless goblins like those who headed up the bank. A little work, a heap of danger and a LOT of gold.

Fleur took Victoire and their belongings to the tent they were assigned while Bill, Eloise and Old Reg got started on the work. The more they were told and got to see for themselves the more they understood why they were all there. A tomb had been found, one that contained many layers of curses from cultures all over the world. The outer most layer had been easy enough for them to break through, it was worded and bound using runes and phrasing typical of ancient Chinese wards.

The next layer, however, was formed from magic from Japan. Those they'd been able to break through because they had a curse breaker on loan from the Japanese Ministry and the third layer was bound up using some complicated Indian spells that Bill had never even heard of. Layer after layer had been revealed until finally they'd only been able to identify the culture responsible for the wards. That's when they'd called in Gringott's to borrow some of their curse breakers.

It was fascinating and Bill lost himself in the work, just as curious as the history researchers to find what such intricate wards were protecting. As the days passed and the layers of wards were stripped away, the atmosphere in the camp swelled with excitement until finally, on their sixth day in the camp they managed to break through the final, most complicated ward.

As the final ward crumbled there was no sign, no indication that anything was wrong. These was no big flashing sign, no sharp wards or angry warnings to prepare them for what was about to happen.

Nothing happened to alert them that they hadn't broken through wards designed to protect some great treasure. There was nothing to tell them their children would soon know the horror of war.

Bill Weasley wouldn't know until it was too late what they had unknowingly unleashed on the world.


	2. Chapter 2

**a/n: **I have not abandoned this fic or you, my readers. Things have been utterly chaotic these last few weeks and then when i went to post this update on Wednesday my Mac and the world was conspiring against me. Thank god for my mum, otherwise this still wouldn't be up. She's oft me with her computer for the day. Enjoy this next chapter and expect the next one up, as i always intended, in two weeks (from last Wednesday).

Thanks for all of the wonderful reviews!

**Chapter 1 – Harry**

There was an elbow digging into his back and someone's icy feet were attempting to steal all of the warmth from between his knees. This was not at all how he wanted to be woken on his day off after working a really late night. That being said, Harry could at least consider it a win that whichever of his family members had decided to crawl into bed with him hadn't just jumped all over him.

Of course, that's when the coughing started. He cracked open an eye and squinted at the clock on his nightstand. He must have been more tired than he thought because it was already creeping toward ten and the weak spring sun was attempting – and largely failing – to peek through the clouds to cast a soft light around his bedroom. At this time of day, Ally would already be at work and the girls should have been at school. They'd both been delighted to test drive Hermione's school program for integrating muggle and magical children in the primary years.

Only, one of them was not at school. He wondered why Ally hadn't bothered to wake him; he didn't normally sleep so soundly that he wouldn't notice everyone moving around him or one of his kids crawling into their bed.

Harry rolled over, back pulling free of the elbow and knees recovering some warmth as he twisted around to see which kid would have the joy of his company all day long. James (bloody Luna) was sprawled next to him, elbow jutting out as she propped a book on her stomach. Her knees were bent to curl her feet close to him and her eyes were all red and puffy. She didn't look well at all and her ears were smoking slightly. He sincerely doubted she was taking in a word on the page she was attempting to read.

His youngest, apparently, had the flu.

He pushed himself up in the bed, pushing pillows into a more confortable position and took the book gently out of her hands. She let him take it without protest and he saw it was the latest mystery in her favourite series. When she was younger they'd read the books together but the older she got the more she was happy to just sit by the fire or out in the sun and read it for herself.

That didn't mean she didn't fold easily into his side as he wrapped an arm around her and started to read from the top of the page. They stayed that way as Harry read his way through two chapters until James was asleep. When he was sure she was out, he eased himself out of bed and went about getting some breakfast together. He couldn't imagine she would want any food if she hadn't already managed to nibble a little something before everyone else left.

Downstairs in the kitchen he found that Ally had left the paper and a list of instructions for James' care on the table. Like he didn't know how to take care of his own daughter when she had the flu? A simple breakfast of toast and jam suited him just fine and he'd read through the whole paper, showered and was just contemplating feeding the goat and chickens when James started to stir.

Another dose of Pepper Up potion and she was perfectly happy to sit out in the garden while Harry went about the chores. Some days he missed having a house elf to do these chores – he'd dearly hoped after leaving the Dursley's he'd never again have to labour in the yard – but Kip had slipped away peacefully two years before and on lazy days like this he didn't mind so much.

They fed the chickens first, well Harry fed them while James sat in a patch of sunlight, wrapped in a blanket and making commentary he assumed she thought was amusing. Once he'd fed the chickens and she finished telling him all the ways she could have done it better he set about collecting up the eggs while she told him all about her muggle friend Sally and the adventures they'd gotten up to when they were exploring her attic while supposedly helping Sally's mother clean it.

Harry made all the right noises and asked a number of insightful questions that said he absolutely wanted to hear all about the junk in Sally McDonalds dusty attic. It was a skill he'd been working on when Alex was this age but he'd only just perfected in time to use it on James.

Thank Merlin he had because in the middle of an excited ramble about school and another about the village fair, James admitted she'd had another nightmare. Harry, who'd been crouched down with his head stuck in what he was really hoping was a rabbit warren, looked up sharply. James didn't seem particularly perturbed by this and he worried that he and Ally had raised their daughters to be a little too unconcerned about the horrors the world could throw at them. That incident with the dragon stood out sharply in his mind but he didn't have too much time to dwell on it.

The first nightmare had happened almost three years ago and they'd spent days stressing over it. Analysing everything, every moment of the dream in excruciating detail until Harry could describe the dream from not just his view point but that of Ally and the girls' as well. After weeks without another dream and with no sign of any darkness coming, they'd all pushed it to the very backs of their minds.

The next dream had occurred almost a year later and as it was exactly the same as the first they hadn't felt the need to drag every detail out of the kids again. It did bring up the same fears they'd been trying to bury since Voldemort was killed and the war ended but they tried to shield the girls from as much of it as possible. At least as much as they could when they were magically bound together.

The dream had occurred more frequently after that but still not often enough that they were feeling a push to solve the mystery. By now the kids thought it was more annoying than spooky and had lumped it in the same corner of their minds that they'd happily stored all of the other scary moments they'd been in. The fact they even had a corner of their minds where they shoved this stuff possibly was not a good sign of how much they'd been exposed to but Harry knew his kids were different. They no doubt had a long and complicated – probably violent – future ahead of them. A little dream was nothing for them.

By the time afternoon rolled around and it was time to pick up Alex, James was once more perfectly healthy. Her phoenix constitution and the Pepper Up potion had cured her of the flu much faster than any other kid could have been and she was bouncing around, eager to walk into the village to pick up her sister. Harry still made her put on an extra coat – how it was that a girl who could set herself on fire could get cold would forever be a mystery to Harry. That being said, he still found himself layering up in winter.

The walk into the village didn't take long – it probably would have taken even less time if James hadn't insisted on jumping in the one remaining puddle from the previous nights rain and fallen waist deep into mud. Harry had managed to contain his laughter long enough to dry her off with his wand but the two were still chuckling when they got to school.

They arrived just in time for the bell to ring and it was mere moments before Alex came strolling out, casual as you please. She was walking alone, head held high with a strange look on her face. The other students weren't giving her particularly unfriendly looks but they were giving her a wide birth. Harry felt a twinge of worry surge through him. His bond with Alex could tell him when she was physically hurt and it could tell him when she was feeling really strong emotions but the subtler ones were hard to distinguish.

He took heart from the fact that James didn't seem concerned, as sisters their bond seemed to be honed more closely toward each other and if she wasn't worried then Harry would wait until he started his parental freak out.

Alex spotted them almost immediately and her pace picked up as she eagerly moved down the steps and across the schoolyard. She didn't slow down when she reached them, choosing instead to plough right into Harry, her arms going around him as she buried her face in his middle. Even as he wrapped his arms around her and squeezed, Harry immediately started to worry. At eleven, Alex had reached that point where showing affection to her parents in public was seriously uncool; for her to go straight for a hug – in front of all of her classsmatess – had him seriously concerned.

As if to make it worse, Alex's teacher called out to him from the steps. He looked up from the top of his daughter's head to meet the woman's eyes. Her lips were pursed in a tight line but her eyes were crinkled with concern. Harry squeezed Alex tightly before releasing her gently into her concerned sisters care. James reached out and took her sisters hand.

'I want you to go straight home,' he instructed them quietly. 'Flame as soon as you're out of sight.'

They nodded and hurried off down the street, he watched them closely, saw them dart into the shadows behind a tree and knew they were gone. Steeling himself, he turned and made his way toward Mrs Fordham.

'Why don't you come inside?' she suggested when he reached her and he didn't like the way that sounded. Alex may not have been particularly emotional but her teacher seemed to think something bad was going on.

Harry didn't look around the classroom when they entered, he wasn't interested in the changes in artwork or the new displays that had gone up since the last round of parent teacher interviews. He moved instead, to the desk right in front of Mrs Fordham's and rested against it; he didn't even attempt to pull out the chair.

'Something happened today?'

She hesitated, struggling to find the right words and Harry's concern ratcheted up another notch. 'One of the children was handing out invitations to a party, everyone got one-'

'But Alex didn't,' Harry finished for her. He knew how that felt, knew what it was like to be the one left out, the one kid who didn't have any friends. He also knew that her situation was completely different from his. She may not have had many friends at school but she spent plenty of time with Sirius' girls, with Teddy, with all of the kids and if not she was never alone, her relationship with her sister was strong enough that Harry never felt he had to worry about his daughters' being alone.

'I'm concerned about Alex,' she continued. 'She doesn't play with any of the other children in the playground, she only plays with James and that caused some teasing today when James wasn't here.'

Harry wanted to cut her off before her concern went too far. 'We have a big family,' Harry began, 'they don't live in the village here but we see them all the time. Alex is very close to her cousins, I'm not worried about her social skills if that's where you're going.'

The look Harry got in return was one of such pity he felt a deep growing urge to smack the woman. What in the name of Merlin did she know about his family? What right did she have to comment on the tiny fraction of Alex's life that she saw?

'Mr Potter, I don't think you realise just how serious this is,' she insisted, she certainly tried to make her concerns known. She detailed to Harry every little thing she'd noticed over the past few months about Alex's behaviour, laid it out before them as though chronicling all of his daughters faults. Most of it, he felt, wasn't even anything she'd done wrong. The biggest issue her teacher seemed to have was how unconcerned she seemed by it all.

'If one of my other students was the only one not to receive an invitation they would be devastated, I'd never hear the end of it. Alex, she just shook it off like it was nothing.'

This wasn't something Harry found worrying. In fact, he was more than a little proud that his daughter wasn't letting some petty little slight get to her. Sure, he had noticed she was a little hurt but it hadn't broken her and she certainly wouldn't cry over it. He and Ally were raising their daughters to be strong and independent, she knew who her friends were and she wasn't about to worry about a bunch of mean muggle girls.

'And I should be worried about this?'

'To be frank, Mr Potter, the students, they think she's weird.' Underneath her words Harry could here the unspoken _we_. They'd always gotten along with the people in the village. They made a point to go to all of the festivals and help out at the school fun days. They had tried their best to appear to be the ordinary muggle family the village thought them to be. Where had they gone wrong? And why was it only now, after years of being at the school, that concerns were being raised?

'I'm not worried about my daughter,' Harry said firmly. 'I'll talk with my wife tonight and see if we can't sort this out but I assure you, my daughter is not about to let some petty slight get to her.'

Harry rose to his feet and left without giving the woman time to say anything more. Out in the schoolyard, several kids were playing on the equipment while their mothers stood around chatting. One of the girls was James' friend Sally, her mother was merrily chatting away to a woman Harry only vaguely recognised and he made a beeline for her.

The mothers all glanced over at him as he approached, he was a good ten years younger than the lot of them and when he and Ally first started showing up around the village there'd been a lot of talk about how young they were and a good deal of gossip about how they could afford to live in that big old house at their age. The words "family money" got tossed around a bit and while it may have been true to a certain extent neither Harry nor Ally could say that in the years since they'd moved in they hadn't both been working damn hard at their very important jobs.

Harry smiled winningly and pretended not to know that they were all checking him out as he approached. 'Donna,' he said, sounding more confused than he intended. 'Are my kids weird?'

'What?' she laughed. 'Of course not!'

Harry frowned, shoving his hands into the pockets of his jacket and turned his attention away from the women and onto the kids as they played on the equipment. Something of his troubled thoughts must have shown because Donna suddenly became serious. She reached out and placed a gentle hand on his arm.

'What's this all about, Harry?'

Harry shook his head, dismissing it all. 'Its nothing, just something stupid Alex's teacher said. We still on for dinner this weekend?'

Of all the muggles in the village it was Donna and her husband that he and Ally had become closest to. Their ties had begun with James' friendship with Sally and it just blossomed from there. The relationship had been good for them as it kept their ties to the muggle world from falling away. It didn't hurt that Hermione was openly encouraging more ties to muggles to dissolve the hatred that had been building over the centuries. Over the last couple of years Hermione had proudly shown off the numbers that told how successful her idea had been in reducing muggle hate crimes.

'Of course, you know Oliver never misses a chance to eat your wife's desserts.'

Feeling somewhat better about things, Harry made his goodbyes and headed off down the lane. As soon as he was out of sight he flamed to the house, not wanting to leave the girls on their own for much longer than he already had. Last time they tried leaving the girls alone for an hour James ended up with a broken arm and Alex with a dislocated shoulder. They'd never gotten the full story out of the girls but Harry had always suspected it had something to do with a particularly competitive game of Quidditch in the back corner of the property near the woods.

Nothing was broken this time. Harry found the girls in the kitchen where they had helped themselves to some cookies and milk and spread some sketchbooks and colouring pencils across the kitchen table. They were talking quietly while the WWN played in the background. He took the fact they didn't stop talking when he came in as a good sign. He dropped a kiss on the top of Alex's head and took a couple of cookies for himself.

Alex would talk when she was ready; he wasn't about to push it. While his daughters spent a quiet afternoon drawing Harry sat at the table and did nothing more than watch them. Sometimes it was nice to just sit back and enjoy that his children got the chance to be kids. Given what he knew of Ally's childhood and what his own had been like, they were doing everything they could to make sure Alex and James had a perfectly ordinary childhood.

Alex didn't choose to talk about her day until he started on dinner. Just as Harry expected she wasn't all that hurt by what had happened, 'We'll be at the Quidditch, anyway,' she explained dismissively. 'I'd much rather see the Harpies play the Cannons than pretend I care about Gemma Barker.'

Harry found this a perfectly reasonable response. He knew he would much rather be at the Quidditch than at some silly party for a kid he didn't much like.

'I'm just annoyed everyone was making a huge deal out of it. They wanted me to care and got really annoyed when I didn't.'

Again, Harry found this perfectly reasonable. 'Fair enough, I'll talk to Mrs Fordham.'

Problem solved, they went back to their separate tasks. Alex considered the issue over and Harry was happy to go along with her. He'd still bring it up with Ally later but now it would be just a father sharing the details of his daughter's day with the mother of his children. It wouldn't be a concerned parent fretting over something so inconsequential as a missing party invite.

The war against Voldemort had taught him not to stress the little things. Certainly in his life there were plenty of big things for him to focus on.

He just didn't know, then, how big or how bad those things were going to be.


	3. Chapter 3

**a/n: **Thanks for all of the reviews! This one seats to explore the changes the wizarding world has undergone (in further detail) and we get to see what some of the other members of the ADADA are up to.

**Chapter 2 – Ron**

Standing in the elevator with memos flying above his head, Ron tried to cover his yawn behind his hand but he didn't imagine it was anything near effective. He and Daphne had been up all night with Rose and if he really thought about it he'd probably had about an hours sleep total. He'd thought sleepless nights were a thing of the past now that Arty was sleeping through the night but Rose had caught some sort of stomach bug that was going around her school and they'd been up all night trying to soothe her.

The doors opened onto his floor and he stepped out, waving tired greetings as he made his way through the maze of cubicles to his own desk. He'd done a lot to make the tiny workspace more comfortable. Photos of his wife and kids took up one cubicle wall above his desk, while the other showed a map of Britain that had a few pins stuck in it but had most recently been used as a dartboard when he was bored. His in-tray was looking a little on the full side and someone had dropped off a number of reports that had filtered through from the muggle police.

He had very little hope that one of them contained useful information on one of the sour looking witches and wizards looking down at him from the wanted posters pinned around the map of Britain. Even if it did look like this particular series of tips had been dropped off by Dudley.

'Morning!' Stephanie greeted cheerfully, poking her head over the top of his cubicle. Ron knew from experience she was kneeling on her chair. 'Rose still sick, huh?' she went on when she took in his messy hair and tired eyes.

Ron grunted something in reply that might have been confirmation and started to pick up the first file. 'You looked through these?'

Stephanie shook her head, 'I only just got back; there was a sighting of Shanahan in Diagon Alley of all places.'

Ron raised an eyebrow at the absurdity of that but Stephanie just nodded seriously. Why any self-respecting dark wizard on the run would suddenly pop up in such a highly populated area was just beyond him. Sometimes they just didn't even make it hard on them. 'You get him?'

Stephanie made an unhappy noise kind of like a cat. 'They sent me with Tran, kid took a stunner right to the face and blew the whole thing.' Her head thumped down onto her folded arms. 'He's clumsier than Tonks ever was.'

If he hadn't actually worked with Lucas Tran, Ron would have found that hard to believe. They had to cut him slack, though. The guy had only just come out of Auror training and he didn't have the advantage of such intense training during school as Stephanie and Ron did. At least if the long fight against Voldemort had been good for anything it was that it had produced a few already seasoned Aurors. Unfortunately it meant that anyone coming out of training now came off a little unprepared.

'You don't seem particularly concerned,' Ron observed.

Stephanie shrugged. 'I managed to tag him before he got away, I'll have him in the cells by the end of the day.' With those confidant words, she dropped back down to her own desk and went about doing what Ron knew he should be doing: going through the pile of work in his in-tray.

He was too tired to focus on mind numbing paperwork, though, so he dragged the pile of loose leaf notes Dudley had delivered toward him and gave them a quick look over. Most of the time the reports that came through Dudley's office were things that he had already looked at and considered worth further investigation or they were the ones that just completely baffled him. Dudley may have grown a lot more understanding of the wizarding world over the last decade but that didn't mean he had all the answers and every once in a while something came through his office that he just had no idea how to handle. Those things usually got handed off to junior Aurors, the fact that this had been delivered to Ron suggested Dudley wasn't all that concerned about it, just that he'd found it odd.

The first page, Ron couldn't be sure he actually read properly. His eyes were a little blurry and he got a little bored with the details. Housewife from Essex spotted a strange man standing in her neighbour's front yard, three days in a row for exactly thirteen minutes. The only reason she'd bothered to call it in to police was because her neighbours were away and their eighteen year old niece was house sitting. According to Dudley's notes, the man had done little more than stand in the front garden and stare up at the sky. There was a description of the man but Ron glossed over it, moving on to the next page when that one failed to peak his interest.

Jenna Bowman, a student at Oxford, called police after she saw what, by all accounts, was the same man standing on top of a dumpster behind the bookstore where she worked three nights in a row. According to the report he stood on the lid of the closed dumpster each night for seven minutes staring up at the sky. Jenna Bowman had only called police when she realised that the bookstore owner had finally rented out the apartment above the store to a teen mother and her young son. She'd been worried the man might have been looking for a way into the building.

Ron sat up straight, surprise shaking loose the last remnants of tiredness. He flipped quickly to the next page and read the next report. Sanjay Coleman (of Coleman, Wellington & Birch) had reported a man standing in the middle of the park across the road from his townhouse three nights in a row staring at the stars. Again, he hadn't thought anything of it until he'd realised that the man wasn't a neighbour and shouldn't have had a key to the park. The man stayed for three nights, staring at the stars for exactly nineteen minutes each night, always at exactly the same time – when he let the cat in at 1:15am.

Whipping out a fresh sheet of parchment and a quill, Ron flipped back to the first report and read it through more carefully, making note of the witness, the time and location and any minor details he wanted clarified. Sixteen pages in total, each one containing a different report of a strange man standing perfectly still in a location that made his actions suspicious. Each witness described the strange man the same way. He was tall and thin with dark hair that curled around his face and a sharp nose. His clothes were simple jeans and a plain black t-shirt, those that had seen him in daylight described him as pale but quite good-looking. One of the witnesses remarked that he was wearing what could have been motorcycle boots but they looked like they were made from some sort of scaly material. Dudley had underlined the description and written in different coloured ink the words "dragon hide?".

Curiosity definitely peaked, Ron tugged open the bottom drawer of his desk and dug through the various bits and pieces of WWW products (the serious range) and other random things he'd collected and didn't know what to do with, until he found the badge and ID that identified him to muggles as a police officer and would get him through the doors to visit Dudley. This was another idea of Hermione's that had worked wonders to limit the number of memory charms that had to be performed. If anyone got curious and ran the badge number or name through the muggle "system" it would spit out what Dudley had called classified bullshit and refer them to his office.

Gathering up his notes, he clipped the badge onto his belt as Dudley had shown him to do and pocketed the ID card. He did a quick check to make sure he wasn't wearing anything overtly wizard (he didn't think the dragon hide jacket and boots would be cause for alarm) and stuck his head over the "wall" separating his desk from Stephanie's. His head nearly collided with Abby's when she sprung up from Stephanie's desk obviously intending to ask after her whereabouts.

Jerking back, Ron swore, taking full advantage of being away from his kids to get quite colourful.

'Are you done?' Abby asked, looking terribly amused by his unnecessary swearing. 'Excellent,' she said when he nodded. 'You seen Stephanie?'

'You must have just missed her,' he answered, folding his notes and tucking them into the inside pocket of his jacket. 'She got a lead on Shanahan, why?'

Abby waved her hand dismissively, 'It can wait.'

'You doin' anything?' Ron asked, figuring he might as well take a second set of eyes.

'What did you have in mind?'

'Grab your muggle ID and I'll fill you in on the way.'

They met back at the lifts and as they made their way down to the atrium Ron explained what Dudley had come across, making sure to include as many details as possible because she didn't have time to read the reports herself. By the time they had cleared the anti-apparation wards Abby was smiling happily. 'I love the weird ones!' she said happily, 'They're always more interesting.'

Rolling his eyes he gave her one last look before he disapparated, leaving the Ministry of Magic behind and reappearing in an alley just down the street from the police building where Dudley had his office. Once Abby appeared they exited the alley and joined the crowded muggle street traffic. In the years since they'd left Hogwarts things had changed so much, before they would have been worried about sticking out and looking odd, now they may have been wearing dragon hide but they fit seamlessly into the muggle surroundings. No robes to worry about, no lack of exposure leading to strange wardrobe choices.

Hermione had revolutionised the wizarding world with her reforms and her new policies. It was a poorly held secret among them that they all strongly believed she would one day become Minister for Magic. Oh they still held onto the old ways in some things, robes were still very much part of the Hogwarts uniform and some jobs still held onto them – the Ministry was full of departments where robes were still expected – but as the new generation of children was exposed more and more to the muggle world more and more things had started creeping across.

The old pureblood families were adamantly opposing every change Hermione made but they could hardly argue with the facts. The war against Voldemort had left the wizarding world in shambles and they'd needed someone to look to, Harry had firmly stood behind the new changes in the Ministry and with his support it had been all the easier for Kingsley to shift the focus from pureblood mania to tolerance and start mending fences. From what Ron understood, Kingsley had somehow developed quite a good relationship with the muggle Prime Minister, a far cry from how things used to be when he'd first slipped into the office as an aide to the last man who took the office.

A decade ago they wouldn't have been able to walk into the police building and walk straight through to the lifts just by flashing their ID. Then it would have involved making trips to police officers' homes after working hours and using memory charms and compulsion spells to get them to talk. Now, one of the men they passed going into the lift as he was going out, smiled roguishly at Abby and greeted her by name. Abby winked back, offering a cheeky smile that turned smug when the doors closed, shutting off her view of the handsome officer.

'Does your husband know what a perpetual flirt you are?' Ron mused.

'It's the whole reason he married me,' Abby shot back, pushing the button for Dudley's floor.

Unable to argue with what was no doubt a truthful response, Ron just shook his head. Dudley's office was on the third floor, the ground being occupied by the public areas, one and two home to the normal police divisions, three was home to a few special units and four was something to do with something Ron didn't understand at all despite the number of times both Harry and Hermione had tried to explain it to him.

They got a few interested looks when they stepped off the lift but didn't stop to chat, instead making their way directly to the far end of the floor where Dudley and Jackson had an entire corner to themselves. The whole floor was very open plan except where a wall had been put in to shield Dudley and Jackson's work from prying eyes.

When they rounded the corner they found both Dudley and Jackson at their desks though it didn't look as though much work was going on. Both men were leaning back in their chairs with their feet up on their desks, tossing a small rubber ball across the desks between them. They'd long ago pushed the desks together in the middle of the room to allow for maximum use of available wall space for maps and file cabinets. One wall was almost completely taken up by a bookshelf that was filled with cardboard boxes full of notes and evidence. The only window in the room had a shelf below it where they kept a bowl of fresh water and a small dish of owl treats.

'Working hard, boys?' Abby said by way of greeting.

To their credit, neither of them jumped or acted guilty of wasting time. Jackson caught one last throw from Dudley and dropped the ball into an open drawer by his feet. 'Well that didn't take long,' he observed.

'What didn't take long?' Ron asked, coming further into the room to lean against the window, careful not to dislodge the water dish or owl treats.

'I only sent those reports across this morning,' Dudley explained.

'So everything you've got is in those reports?' Ron clarified.

Both Dudley and Jackson nodded, Dudley adding, 'We've no way to tell if any of your lot have noticed this guy but that's every report that got fielded to us once we started asking around.'

'I'm sure there'll be more once word spreads,' Jackson put in.

'Did you talk to all these people?' Abby asked.

'Only the two around London, we don't have the easy travel you guys do.'

'And they didn't give you anything else to go on?' Ron wondered.

'The only reason I sent that on to you was because that last woman described what sounded like dragon hide. I'd have just pushed it on to some other unit if it weren't for that.'

Deciding not to respond to that, Ron asked a few more questions about the people who had reported the sightings before he and Abby left the building and set off for the first location. Dudley had helpfully provided them in order of appearance and so it was to the housewife in Essex they first went.

Since the report had been filed, the neighbours had evidently returned home. They didn't seem all that concerned with the stranger who had staked out their front yard because they hadn't discovered anything missing. Still, they spoke with the woman who had witnessed the strange occurrence and got as much detail as possible before Ron eventually placed himself in as close to the position as the lady could remember the man standing.

'And he was just staring at the sky?' Abby questioned.

'Yes,' the woman confirmed.

'Straight up or in a particular direction?' Ron wanted to know, adjusting the way he was standing to look up and over in a slightly different direction. It didn't matter which way he looked or how he stood he just couldn't figure out what the man might have been looking at.

Standing on the dumpster and in the middle of the park gave them just as little to go on. Although they got more of a detailed description from the witnesses there was simply nothing they could see to indicate why a wizard might be interested in those particular spots.

'Maybe it's got something to do with astronomy?' Abby suggested, after yet another failed attempt to shine light on the mystery. 'I'll check in with Parvati – she always keeps a good record of the positions of the stars – and see if there was anything special about those particular nights.'

Having solved nothing, they headed back to the Ministry of Magic to get started on that paperwork he'd been avoiding (Abby, having already filed hers, was free to check up on those star charts at the _Daily Prophet_), but not before stopping by the Leaky Cauldron to ask around and grab a bite to eat.

By the time he left work for the night the mystery had been pushed to the very back of his mind by a sudden sighting of Kelsey Warren that had resulted in muggle injuries and an obliviator taking a trip to the hospital. Half the Department of Magical Law Enforcement got involved in that fiasco and it wasn't even on the scale of Sirius' altercation all those years ago.

It would be a week before Abby got around to checking out the star charts (and finding nothing of interest) and another whole month before another sighting ended up on Ron's desk. With no one injured and nothing taken there seemed little point in continuing to look into the matter. Despite the new sighting, Ron shoved the whole lot of reports into a file and shoved it in a drawer. No reason to waste time on something that wasn't causing any harm, even if it was odd.


	4. Chapter 4

**a/n: I make no excuses for the delay. What i do want to say is that this chapter makes reference to Dinner with the Dursleys and that, for the last time, Molly didn't just up and disappear, those of you who have read DwtD know that she got tired of being named Molly because it was the name name of babies and old people. Thanks for all the reviews and enjoy.**

**Chapter 3: Daphne**

She was standing a little apart from all of the other mothers waiting to pick up their kids. As hard as she'd tried she didn't seem to fit in with the other mums and dads at Rose's school and after a term of strange looks and stunted conversation she'd given up all together of making friends. Ron got along just fine with all of them and that would just have to be enough to satisfy Hermione.

It wasn't like she could do anything about it. The other parents thought she was distant and a little scary, at least that's what she'd gathered from overheard conversations and hesitant words said to Ron. The other parents whispered about her, about the young soldier wounded in war. How they'd gotten the knowledge that the scar across her chest was an old battle wound she would never know, but it made them edgy around her.

They thought she'd been a casualty of the muggle war and although she'd never corrected them it had created quite a few rumours about town. The parents whispered about the war veteran and her spy husband – she was beginning to think Rose was telling tales at school to sensationalise what her parents did.

Either way you looked at it, Daphne still stood apart from the other parents. It was only because she was standing behind a couple of women who struggled with volume control that she picked up on the week's gossip.

'I'm telling you!' a woman with dark curls insisted. 'The last two nights, just standing in the driveway staring up at the sky!'

Something about that resonated with Daphne, vague memories of something Ron had been looking into coming to mind.

'It's the weirdest thing,' she went on. 'I mean the bloke's not bad looking but why's he standing in my driveway for thirteen minutes every night?'

'Thirteen minutes?' her friend laughed. 'You timed the bloke?'

'Well it's the same time both nights. 11:52 every night for exactly thirteen minutes.'

Daphne stopped listening after that but she didn't stop thinking about what she'd overheard. She'd have to check with her husband but she was sure the last time something like this had happened it had been for three nights in a row. Perhaps that meant he would be back tonight?

Rose interrupted her thoughts just then, running eagerly out of the school building to greet her mother and younger brother. She reached up eagerly to take Arty from Daphne's arms and snuggled him close, blowing raspberries on his cheek.

'Where's your brother?' Daphne asked suspiciously. Much like Ron, Will disliked school and managed to get himself in a lot of trouble over silly nonsense. Thank Merlin Rose took after her mother.

'He's coming,' Rose answered with a shrug, offering her brother back now that she'd gotten to say hello. He was getting a bit big for Rose to hold for too long.

Out of the corner of her eye, Daphne saw the woman with the curly hair take the hand of a boy with matching curls and walk toward a car. 'Do you know that boy?' she asked Rose, gesturing over her shoulder as subtly as possible without risking Rose missing the motion completely.

'Yeah,' Rose scrunched up her nose. 'That's Mitchell Blaine,' she explained. 'He's a bully.'

She said that with such conviction that Daphne worried for a moment that Rose might have been one of his victims. Then she remembered the time she'd been called to pick her daughter up after slugging another kid in the nose and she had to worry for a moment that Rose might be a bully. Shaking her head, she spotted Will slinking toward them looking suspiciously sly.

'What did you do?' This was said with more resignation – and a good dose of exasperation – than with anger.

'Its best if you don't know,' he replied smartly, pushing Rose gently so that she was forced to turn around and start walking.

Daphne got the horrible feeling they were fleeing the scene. 'Did you break any laws?'

'No,' he assured her, putting on the most honest expression he could manage.

She narrowed her eyes suspiciously but made no further comment, choosing to hustle them both away from the school and to their usual disapparation point. Ron might have been confidant using a muggle car but Daphne preferred to use side-along apparation. It took a bit of juggling to make sure everyone was attached firmly but she'd never yet left anyone or any body parts behind and it got her kids used to the horrible sensation early on.

Once they were safely back at home and Will was seated at the table demanding a snack before he went outside to play, Daphne asked her children if they knew where Mitchell Blaine and his family lived. After extracting something like an answer from them, she poured each a glass of milk, handed them a cookie each and sent them on their way.

Rose was back in minutes with some parchment and coloured ink. 'I'm going to write a letter to Uncle Bill, will you help me?'

Daphne waited until after dinner when the kids were in their rooms playing before she broached the topic with Ron. She'd been right in what she remembered about the man and his strange appearances and Ron seemed eager to do a bit of poking around to try and find out more. It wasn't top priority, she gathered but now that he'd been reminded about it, Ron seemed happy to have a chance to solve the mystery.

'Its no good us just watching him, though,' Ron mused. 'That's really all the muggles have been doing and it hasn't really told us anything.'

'I doubt he's going to let us approach him though.'

'No,' Ron agreed. 'A muggle in Derbyshire tried that and the man just turned and walked away.'

'He _walked _away?' Daphne frowned. It was hard to say whether she was more surprised that the man had walked away after being startled or disappointed that he didn't vanish unexpectedly or curse the muggle. At least a curse or some disapparating would give them some idea of what was going on.

'Do you think Harry would let us borrow Alex?'

Daphne was sure she'd heard that wrong. 'I'm sorry, what?'

'Alex,' Ron repeated. 'About yay high,' he motioned with his hand somewhere around his ribs, 'blonde hair with a tendency to burst into flames?'

Daphne opened her mouth to insist that no, Harry would not let them borrow his daughter and that there wasn't any logical reason they should borrow an eleven year old girl but she snapped her mouth shut with sudden understanding. 'Do you think he would?'

Ron gave her the look she'd come to recognise as the one that said he couldn't believe he'd gotten so lucky as to marry a woman who would go along with his crazy harebrained schemes. She quite liked the look, it meant she still had a bit of wild still in her and hadn't lost it all to the role of stay-at-home mum.

'Let's find out,' he said with a grin, turning to rummage through the drawers as though he ever had a hope of finding what he was looking for.

Daphne nudged him gently out of the way and within moments produced a plush owl; they still kept a few lurking around in case of emergency and they were darn useful when communicating quickly with a man (or woman) who could just appear wherever they liked, wards be damned. She tossed the owl into the air, murmuring the spell to activate it and watched it disappear in a puff of fake feathers.

Not two minutes later, Ally appeared in the kitchen, flames arriving a heartbeat before she did. 'You called?'

'Could we borrow Alex for an hour?' Ron asked without bothering with an explanation.

Daphne rolled her eyes.

'Sure,' Ally replied brightly and then, with suspicion, 'Why?'

Ron quickly brought her up to speed on the strange man caught apparently stargazing around Britain and how they had finally gotten an idea of where he might be that night. 'He hasn't hurt anyone,' Ron assured Ally, 'He just won't let anyone approach him without just walking away.'

'We thought Alex might have better luck with him,' Daphne explained. 'She's not much of a threat to look at and she has that handy escape mechanism built right in.'

Ally gave her a bemused sort of look, part of which, Daphne was sure, came from the erroneous assumption that anyone could ever, in his or her right mind, consider Alex anything other than a threat. The she shrugged. 'Yeah, alright.' And she disappeared in another pillar of flames, presumably to get Alex.

However, when she came back twenty minutes later, she'd brought the whole family with her. Both she and Harry were dressed like they were about to go hunting dark wizards – not that they didn't normally dress that way – and the girls were dressed in their pyjamas with slippers on their feet as though that could somehow disguise the threat they posed. They were both wide-awake and looking chipper. Daphne wondered if Ally had time to explain in the twenty minutes she was gone just why they were being summoned. Although, she wasn't sure that would have dampened their cheer any. These were the girls that had thought it was a riot to get up close and personal with a dragon.

They were a terrible influence on her own children. Not that Ron was always a great one, himself, he had a tendency to do things he shouldn't and then try to cover himself by telling them not to do it again. Hermione's partner referred to it as a "don't do this at home" disclaimer.

'I've sent a message to George,' Harry assured them. 'He should be here soon to watch the kids.'

For some reason this was no particular comfort. They spent the time waiting for George to arrive planning how they were going to do this. Harry took a few minutes to flame to the house they would be watching to get the lay of the land. When he came back he reported a handy hedge around the house on the opposite side of the street and a nice big tree in the front yard that had nice sturdy branches.

George arrived in the middle of their planning session with Stephanie in tow. While he was dressed for a fun night of hyping up his niece and nephews she was dressed for a fight. Obviously, she'd tagged along for the chance to see this mystery stargazer and not for the joy of spending the night with three kids.

'I mean, I love you, little guy,' she told Arty, tickling his toes as George took his nephew from Ron, 'but hunting down dark wizards is a lot of fun.'

'I think both Arty and I are offended by that,' George grumbled good-naturedly.

Daphne laughed when Stephanie patted George on the shoulder and shot him a sympathetic smile before darting out the kitchen door after Ron and Ally. Before she left, Daphne kissed her kids goodbye. 'Be good,' she cautioned.

'They'll be fine,' George assured her.

'I was talking to you.'

Out in the back garden she caught up with the others. Without a word, Harry offered her his hand, clasped the other on Ron's shoulder and flamed. In a sweeping sensation of warmth they were suddenly standing in the road outside the Blaine house. The house itself was a small little cottage surrounded by a perfectly manicured garden that would have done Vernon Dursley proud. Or her own parents; the house she'd grown up in had been similarly perfect to look at but, like Harry, she much preferred the messy homeliness of The Burrow.

Ally arrived a breath later, hand gripping Stephanie's arm, an expectant look on her face. Daphne realised she was waiting for her daughters to arrive. They did, a moment after their mother, holding hands. It was still a sight to behold, the Potter girls appearing and disappearing in a pillar of flames at such a young age. The amount of freedom the ability gave them was terrifying for a mother. Harry and Ally took it in stride but there were times when she saw the look on their faces that said the things their kids could do did sometimes terrify them as well.

The moment they were all present and accounted for, Harry started issuing orders. 'Alright, Ally will take the roof, the girls and I will take the tree, Stephanie, there's a car down the street, think you can break in? Good. You two,' he motioned to Daphne and Ron, 'you get the hedge.'

'Well, I suppose I was about due a skulking in a hedge,' Daphne replied snarkily but she took off with Ron for the opposite side of the street. She wasn't really mad about it; if she were honest she was quite looking forward to getting her hands dirty again.

Behind them, Ally flamed up onto the roof, landing silently and then disappeared behind a disillusion charm so powerful that the man watching the sky wouldn't see her if he happened to choose that way to look at the sky. Stephanie broke into the car just down the street in seconds, magically silencing the alarm and easing the door closed behind her. Harry helped his daughters scramble up into the tree, disappearing into the leaves and branches until they couldn't be seen from the street or the drive.

The hedge across the street had a small gate cut into it and she and Ron slipped through, Ron casting a silencing charm to mask the squeak of the gate's hinges. They each picked a side and searched the hedge for a good spot to spy on the neighbouring home. It was Ron who found one and soon they were sprawled in the damp grass peering under the hedge and waiting.

Lying beside Ron in the gross reminded her so much of her time at Hogwarts she felt an almost painful tug to relive some of those memories.

'I know you miss this,' Ron's voice when he spoke was little more than a whisper.

'I do,' she conceded, 'but I wouldn't change anything we've done just so that I can go back to hunting down dark wizards.'

They'd talked about it before, her going to work but in the end they'd decided that instead of trying to pass her Auror tests (not that they were in any doubt she could) they'd have Arty instead. She didn't regret that decision, having Arty was definitely more important than taking a few tests earlier. When Arty was in school they could look again at their options. She would never ask Ron to leave his job to watch the kids; they needed his income at the moment.

'Sometimes I miss it,' Ron admitted quietly. 'I miss the fighting and the thrill of hunting down Death Eaters and trying to kill Voldemort.'

Ron would never have admitted that to anyone else, she knew that, but she also knew that he could admit it to her because she felt it too. 'It changed us,' she murmured. 'Learning to fight and kill so young changed us in a way I don't think we can ever come back from.'

'I wonder sometimes,' hesitancy filled Ron's next words. 'Do we teach our kids the same things we learned? Do we protect them by teaching them to protect themselves or do we just hope we'll always be around to keep them safe?'

Daphne wanted to give him the answer he wanted to hear. She wanted to tell him that Voldemort was gone and there was nothing so bad they would need protecting from but could she really tell him that? She knew Harry and Ally were teaching their daughters to fight. Lots of muggle kids, she knew, took karate or martial arts for fun and that was how Harry and Ally were teaching their kids. As if the skills they were learning were just another sport and not skills they might one day need to protect themselves.

The last time she'd spoken to Emmy, she'd been planning to shake up the Defence Against the Dark Arts program at Hogwarts. She'd complained at length that despite the legacy Ally and the ADADA had left behind, the intervening years had seen a slow slip back to the days of learning about spells and dark creatures from textbooks. When she'd agreed to take over the post of DADA professor, she'd informed Flitwick that she was planning to turn the syllabus on its head – and she had the full support of the Ministry behind her. Although she wasn't due to start teaching until September, she'd been planning since she'd found out Vaughn was moving back to Canada.

Perhaps Emmy could teach their children what they needed to know at Hogwarts just as they themselves had learned.

'I don't know,' was all she could tell him. 'Do we really want them to know the kind of fear we did?'

The fell silent after that, lost in thoughts they really didn't like, happy to just be together like the old days. Daphne wondered what Harry was doing to keep the girls from getting bored. She doubted they were used to settling in for long boring nights of surveillance.

Eventually she and Ron started talking about random little things in quiet whispers. They'd gotten around to talking about what they were going to do with the kids for Malfoy's charity gala when 11:52 finally arrived. From their hiding spot they could see the stranger when he appeared on the street corner. He approached the Blaine house on foot and just as all the reports said he took a position in the driveway and turned his head to the sky.

The plan, according to what they'd decided, was to spend the first few minutes just studying the man. Daphne ran her eyes over him, taking in every detail she could. He wasn't all that tall, maybe just a bit taller than she was and his dark curly hair looked as though he'd done little more than comb his fingers through it. His jeans were clean, if a little worn around the knees and his boots were indeed made from dragon hide.

And he really did just stand there with his hands limp by his sides, staring up at the sky.

If she hadn't been looking for it, Daphne doubted she'd have noticed when Alex flamed from the tree to the side of the house so she could walk up to the man as though she'd snuck out a back door. She walked with quiet, sure steps until she was standing right beside the man. She didn't say anything at first, just stood there with her hands in the pocket of her jacket and stared up at the sky.

Until she spoke, Daphne wasn't sure the man had even noticed her. 'What are you looking at?'

'I'm not looking at anything.' His words sounded strange to Daphne's ears, sad and hopeful at the same time and they were strangely void of an accent. If Dudley had heard them he would have called them robotic.

When James appeared on his other side and asked another question, Daphne had to re-evaluate just how much she knew and understood about the Potter girls. 'You're looking for something.'

The man jumped like a scalded cat, not having seen James appear. 'How did you do that?'

'Silencing charm on my slippers,' James explained with a shrug, lifting her fuzzy slipper for him to see. 'My daddy gave them to me.'

The strange man's composure suddenly changed. It was like someone had flipped a switch and suddenly he didn't look harmless and sad he looked scared and furious. He stepped away from the girls with a snarl twisting his face.

'You're witches!' he growled, his words deeper than they should have been, vibrating in Daphne's chest as though he'd shouted them against her ribs.

'Mum says we're special,' Alex told him, neither confirming nor denying his suspicions but confirming to Daphne that Harry and Ally were teaching their kids far more than how to fight like a muggle. Neither of the girls looked at all worried about his sudden aggression.

Her words set something off in the stranger and suddenly he threw his hands out in front of him and shouted something in a language Daphne didn't recognise. It must have been a spell though because something slammed into the girls sending them flying off their feet and tumbling through the air. The girls slammed into the grass with twin "oomphs" and all hell broke loose.


End file.
